There has long been a need to protect parked small aircraft from adverse weather such as, for example, strong sunlight, strong wind, heavy rain, heavy snow, and hail. Typically, permanent or semi-permanent hangars are used to protect aircraft parked on an airfield. However, hangar space is limited and expensive to rent or purchase. Similar protection scenarios and requirements exist for both high- and low-fixed wing aircraft, as well as helicopters. A variety of semi-permanent shelters have been developed to offer some protection from adverse weather such as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,390,688 and 7,089,951 for protecting airplanes. Other types of semi-permanent shelters have been specifically developed for protecting helicopters such as disclosed, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 6,749,151 providing only limited protection and U.S. Pat. No. 8,336,807 providing a complex and expensive clamshell case for encapsulating the helicopter.
Unfortunately, these shelters still have a significant footprint and are most often attached to a fixed or poured concrete footing or the like—therefore, they are viewed by airports as hangars. This type of zoning or characterization makes these shelters more difficult and costly to site, as well as being complicated in cost and labour for installation or manufacture. The need for a fixed footing or foundation also makes the economics of assembling or installing an aircraft shelter cost prohibitive in many smaller locations or environs.
Many of these aircraft shelters are not capable of withstanding strong wind and heavy snow loads as exist in environments such as the North American plains—in these environments it would be desirable to cover and protect the exterior and control surfaces of aircraft parked in an outdoors or semi-protected scenario where full hangar protection is not available, but the need to withstand the elements is a complicating factor in design of such an aircraft shelter. Therefore, a large number of parked light aircraft are simply tied down outside and either completely exposed to adverse weather, or possibly have only some surfaces—canopy, cowling, wings, and/or tail—covered using separate covers made of a fabric material. Unfortunately, the more covers that are used to protect the aircraft, the more time and effort is required for installing and removing them. These partial covers protect from sun but largely do not protect against hail, heavy snow, or wind. In addition to sun protection, it is desirable to provide an aircraft shelter for protecting an aircraft that is capable of withstanding strong wind, heavy rain, heavy snow, and hail.
It would be desirable to provide an aircraft shelter for protecting an aircraft that covers all or a substantial portion of the aircraft and has a substantially small footprint. If it were possible to use a semi-portable or portable aircraft shelter, it is felt that this would be well accepted in the marketplace. Particularly if the need for individual fabric covers were alleviated it is believed this would provide significant benefit.
It is also desirable to provide an aircraft shelter that is easily opened and closed to enable entry/exit of the aircraft. One of the issues with many of the prior art aircraft shelters are that even where they do exist in a reasonably straightforward to erect fashion, the application of multiple covers to the surfaces of the aircraft, often applied during the inclement weather, makes it more difficult and time consuming, and less attractive to use.